The unemployment rate fell a little more than expected, and stood at 10.2% when analysts were expecting 10.5%. In June, it was 11.1%.
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The US economy created 1.8 million jobs in July, a figure much lower than in June, as the restart of activity was slowed by the resurgence of the virus in a large part of the country, announced Friday the Department of Labor.
The month of June had recorded a record, with 4.8 million job creations.
In July, about a third of the jobs created were in the leisure and accommodation sectors, hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As for restaurants and bars, also badly affected, they created 502,000 jobs, a sharp slowdown compared to the months of May and June during which a total of 2.9 million jobs had been created. There are 2.6 million fewer jobs in this sector than in February, before the “Great Containment”.
Other sectors that have created jobs are administration, retail, business services, and health, the Department of Labor said in a statement.
The unemployment rate for July fell a little more than expected, and stood at 10.2% when analysts were expecting 10.5%. In June, it was 11.1%.
However, this rate is still far from the historic low before the COVID-19 pandemic recorded in February (+ 3.5%).
layoffs in March and April were so massive that job creation in May and June still leaves tens of millions of Americans out of work.
The resurgence of the virus from June in a large part of the country forced several southern and western states to put a brake on the restart of activity.
Shops and restaurants, which had reopened a few weeks earlier, had to close their doors again and often lay off employees they had just hired or re-hired.
As a result, new jobless claims were even on the rise for two weeks at the end of July, for the first time since April.
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